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MOGADISHU: Somali leaders are to sign a deal Tuesday for a new government, winding up a seven-year administration that has failed to bring peace to the fragmented country.
Leaders have been discussing the new UN-backed political agreement for three days in the war-torn capital, from where the al Qaeda-linked Shebab rebels withdrew last month after years of fighting to topple the Somali government.
“This important conference (is) to adopt a roadmap for ending the transitional period in Somalia,” said Augustine Mahiga, UN representative to the famine-hit country, in a statement released late Monday.
The deal will be the latest among more than a dozen attempts to resolve Somalia's more than two decades-long civil war.
Hundreds of people are believed to be dying each day from famine exacerbated by conflict, with three-quarters of a million Somalis facing death by starvation, many of them children, the UN said on Monday.
Constant political wrangles and a bloody Islamist insurgency have undermined Somalia's Transitional Federal Government, unable to carry out its key mandate of reconciling the country, writing a new constitution and organising elections.
The new political deal focuses on improving security in the capital Mogadishu and other areas in southern Somalia, national reconciliation, a draft charter, governance and institutional reforms.
President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, president of the breakaway Puntland region Ibrahim Mohamed Mahmud, the leader of the central Gamudug region and leaders of the pro-government militia Ahlu Sunna Wal Jamaa are expected to sign the deal.
The roadmap is to be implemented in the year ahead, after Sharif and parliament speaker agreed in June to extend their terms for another year.
